Chapter XLVIII: Succession And Characters Of The Greek Emperors.—Part

V.

A premature death had swept away the two eldest sons of John the
Handsome; of the two survivors, Isaac and Manuel, his judgment or
affection preferred the younger; and the choice of their dying
prince was ratified by the soldiers, who had applauded the valor
of his favorite in the Turkish war. The faithful Axuch hastened
to the capital, secured the person of Isaac in honorable
confinement, and purchased, with a gift of two hundred pounds of
silver, the leading ecclesiastics of St. Sophia, who possessed a
decisive voice in the consecration of an emperor. With his
veteran and affectionate troops, Manuel soon visited
Constantinople; his brother acquiesced in the title of
Sebastocrator; his subjects admired the lofty stature and martial
graces of their new sovereign, and listened with credulity to the
flattering promise, that he blended the wisdom of age with the
activity and vigor of youth. By the experience of his government,
they were taught, that he emulated the spirit, and shared the
talents, of his father whose social virtues were buried in the
grave. A reign of thirty seven years is filled by a perpetual
though various warfare against the Turks, the Christians, and the
hordes of the wilderness beyond the Danube. The arms of Manuel
were exercised on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Hungary, on the
coast of Italy and Egypt, and on the seas of Sicily and Greece:
the influence of his negotiations extended from Jerusalem to Rome
and Russia; and the Byzantine monarchy, for a while, became an
object of respect or terror to the powers of Asia and Europe.
Educated in the silk and purple of the East, Manuel possessed the
iron temper of a soldier, which cannot easily be paralleled,
except in the lives of Richard the First of England, and of
Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Such was his strength and exercise
in arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of Antioch, was
incapable of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek emperor.
In a famous tournament, he entered the lists on a fiery courser,
and overturned in his first career two of the stoutest of the
Italian knights. The first in the charge, the last in the
retreat, his friends and his enemies alike trembled, the former
for his safety, and the latter for their own. After posting an
ambuscade in a wood, he rode forwards in search of some perilous
adventure, accompanied only by his brother and the faithful
Axuch, who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen,
after a short combat, fled before them: but the numbers of the
enemy increased; the march of the reenforcement was tardy and
fearful, and Manuel, without receiving a wound, cut his way
through a squadron of five hundred Turks. In a battle against the
Hungarians, impatient of the slowness of his troops, he snatched
a standard from the head of the column, and was the first, almost
alone, who passed a bridge that separated him from the enemy. In
the same country, after transporting his army beyond the Save, he
sent back the boats, with an order under pain of death, to their
commander, that he should leave him to conquer or die on that
hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a captive
galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against the
volleys of darts and stones, a large buckler and a flowing sail;
nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian
admiral enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In
one day, he is said to have slain above forty of the Barbarians
with his own hand; he returned to the camp, dragging along four
Turkish prisoners, whom he had tied to the rings of his saddle:
he was ever the foremost to provoke or to accept a single combat;
and the gigantic champions, who encountered his arm, were
transpierced by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword, of the
invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as a
model or a copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a
reasonable suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks: I will not,
to vindicate their credit, endanger my own: yet I may observe,
that, in the long series of their annals, Manuel is the only
prince who has been the subject of similar exaggeration. With the
valor of a soldier, he did not unite the skill or prudence of a
general; his victories were not productive of any permanent or
useful conquest; and his Turkish laurels were blasted in his last
unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the mountains
of Pisidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the
sultan. But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel,
is the contrast and vicissitude of labor and sloth, of hardiness
and effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace, in peace he
appeared incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in
the snow, tired in the longest marches the strength of his men
and horses, and shared with a smile the abstinence or diet of the
camp. No sooner did he return to Constantinople, than he resigned
himself to the arts and pleasures of a life of luxury: the
expense of his dress, his table, and his palace, surpassed the
measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were idly
wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous
love of his niece Theodora. The double cost of a warlike and
dissolute prince exhausted the revenue, and multiplied the taxes;
and Manuel, in the distress of his last Turkish campaign, endured
a bitter reproach from the mouth of a desperate soldier. As he
quenched his thirst, he complained that the water of a fountain
was mingled with Christian blood. “It is not the first time,”
exclaimed a voice from the crowd, “that you have drank, O
emperor, the blood of your Christian subjects.” Manuel Comnenus
was twice married, to the virtuous Bertha or Irene of Germany,
and to the beauteous Maria, a French or Latin princess of
Antioch. The only daughter of his first wife was destined for
Bela, a Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople
under the name of Alexius; and the consummation of their nuptials
might have transferred the Roman sceptre to a race of free and
warlike Barbarians. But as soon as Maria of Antioch had given a
son and heir to the empire, the presumptive rights of Bela were
abolished, and he was deprived of his promised bride; but the
Hungarian prince resumed his name and the kingdom of his fathers,
and displayed such virtues as might excite the regret and envy of
the Greeks. The son of Maria was named Alexius; and at the age of
ten years he ascended the Byzantine throne, after his father’s
decease had closed the glories of the Comnenian line.

The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexius had
been sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion.
By ambition, Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and
rebellion, from whence he was reclaimed by the firmness and
clemency of John the Handsome. The errors of Isaac, the father of
the emperors of Trebizond, were short and venial; but John, the
elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion. Provoked by a
real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the Roman
to the Turkish camp: his apostasy was rewarded with the sultan’s
daughter, the title of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of
a princely estate; and in the fifteenth century, Mahomet the
Second boasted of his Imperial descent from the Comnenian family.
Andronicus, the younger brother of John, son of Isaac, and
grandson of Alexius Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous
characters of the age; and his genuine adventures might form the
subject of a very singular romance. To justify the choice of
three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me to observe,
that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions of
strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was
supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic
muscles, and the air and deportment of a soldier. The
preservation, in his old age, of health and vigor, was the reward
of temperance and exercise. A piece of bread and a draught of
water was often his sole and evening repast; and if he tasted of
a wild boar or a stag, which he had roasted with his own hands,
it was the well-earned fruit of a laborious chase. Dexterous in
arms, he was ignorant of fear; his persuasive eloquence could
bend to every situation and character of life, his style, though
not his practice, was fashioned by the example of St. Paul; and,
in every deed of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to
contrive, and a hand to execute. In his youth, after the death of
the emperor John, he followed the retreat of the Roman army; but,
in the march through Asia Minor, design or accident tempted him
to wander in the mountains: the hunter was encompassed by the
Turkish huntsmen, and he remained some time a reluctant or
willing captive in the power of the sultan. His virtues and vices
recommended him to the favor of his cousin: he shared the perils
and the pleasures of Manuel; and while the emperor lived in
public incest with his niece Theodora, the affections of her
sister Eudocia were seduced and enjoyed by Andronicus. Above the
decencies of her sex and rank, she gloried in the name of his
concubine; and both the palace and the camp could witness that
she slept, or watched, in the arms of her lover. She accompanied
him to his military command of Cilicia, the first scene of his
valor and imprudence. He pressed, with active ardor, the siege of
Mopsuestia: the day was employed in the boldest attacks; but the
night was wasted in song and dance; and a band of Greek comedians
formed the choicest part of his retinue. Andronicus was surprised
by the sally of a vigilant foe; but, while his troops fled in
disorder, his invincible lance transpierced the thickest ranks of
the Armenians. On his return to the Imperial camp in Macedonia,
he was received by Manuel with public smiles and a private
reproof; but the duchies of Naissus, Braniseba, and Castoria,
were the reward or consolation of the unsuccessful general.
Eudocia still attended his motions: at midnight, their tent was
suddenly attacked by her angry brothers, impatient to expiate her
infamy in his blood: his daring spirit refused her advice, and
the disguise of a female habit; and, boldly starting from his
couch, he drew his sword, and cut his way through the numerous
assassins. It was here that he first betrayed his ingratitude and
treachery: he engaged in a treasonable correspondence with the
king of Hungary and the German emperor; approached the royal tent
at a suspicious hour with a drawn sword, and under the mask of a
Latin soldier, avowed an intention of revenge against a mortal
foe; and imprudently praised the fleetness of his horse as an
instrument of flight and safety. The monarch dissembled his
suspicions; but, after the close of the campaign, Andronicus was
arrested and strictly confined in a tower of the palace of
Constantinople.

In this prison he was left about twelve years; a most painful
restraint, from which the thirst of action and pleasure
perpetually urged him to escape. Alone and pensive, he perceived
some broken bricks in a corner of the chamber, and gradually
widened the passage, till he had explored a dark and forgotten
recess. Into this hole he conveyed himself, and the remains of
his provisions, replacing the bricks in their former position,
and erasing with care the footsteps of his retreat. At the hour
of the customary visit, his guards were amazed by the silence and
solitude of the prison, and reported, with shame and fear, his
incomprehensible flight. The gates of the palace and city were
instantly shut: the strictest orders were despatched into the
provinces, for the recovery of the fugitive; and his wife, on the
suspicion of a pious act, was basely imprisoned in the same
tower. At the dead of night she beheld a spectre; she recognized
her husband: they shared their provisions; and a son was the
fruit of these stolen interviews, which alleviated the
tediousness of their confinement. In the custody of a woman, the
vigilance of the keepers was insensibly relaxed; and the captive
had accomplished his real escape, when he was discovered, brought
back to Constantinople, and loaded with a double chain. At length
he found the moment, and the means, of his deliverance. A boy,
his domestic servant, intoxicated the guards, and obtained in wax
the impression of the keys. By the diligence of his friends, a
similar key, with a bundle of ropes, was introduced into the
prison, in the bottom of a hogshead. Andronicus employed, with
industry and courage, the instruments of his safety, unlocked the
doors, descended from the tower, concealed himself all day among
the bushes, and scaled in the night the garden-wall of the
palace. A boat was stationed for his reception: he visited his
own house, embraced his children, cast away his chain, mounted a
fleet horse, and directed his rapid course towards the banks of
the Danube. At Anchialus in Thrace, an intrepid friend supplied
him with horses and money: he passed the river, traversed with
speed the desert of Moldavia and the Carpathian hills, and had
almost reached the town of Halicz, in the Polish Russia, when he
was intercepted by a party of Walachians, who resolved to convey
their important captive to Constantinople. His presence of mind
again extricated him from danger. Under the pretence of sickness,
he dismounted in the night, and was allowed to step aside from
the troop: he planted in the ground his long staff, clothed it
with his cap and upper garment; and, stealing into the wood, left
a phantom to amuse, for some time, the eyes of the Walachians.
From Halicz he was honorably conducted to Kiow, the residence of
the great duke: the subtle Greek soon obtained the esteem and
confidence of Ieroslaus; his character could assume the manners
of every climate; and the Barbarians applauded his strength and
courage in the chase of the elks and bears of the forest. In this
northern region he deserved the forgiveness of Manuel, who
solicited the Russian prince to join his arms in the invasion of
Hungary. The influence of Andronicus achieved this important
service: his private treaty was signed with a promise of fidelity
on one side, and of oblivion on the other; and he marched, at the
head of the Russian cavalry, from the Borysthenes to the Danube.
In his resentment Manuel had ever sympathized with the martial
and dissolute character of his cousin; and his free pardon was
sealed in the assault of Zemlin, in which he was second, and
second only, to the valor of the emperor.

No sooner was the exile restored to freedom and his country, than
his ambition revived, at first to his own, and at length to the
public, misfortune. A daughter of Manuel was a feeble bar to the
succession of the more deserving males of the Comnenian blood;
her future marriage with the prince of Hungary was repugnant to
the hopes or prejudices of the princes and nobles. But when an
oath of allegiance was required to the presumptive heir,
Andronicus alone asserted the honor of the Roman name, declined
the unlawful engagement, and boldly protested against the
adoption of a stranger. His patriotism was offensive to the
emperor, but he spoke the sentiments of the people, and was
removed from the royal presence by an honorable banishment, a
second command of the Cilician frontier, with the absolute
disposal of the revenues of Cyprus. In this station the Armenians
again exercised his courage and exposed his negligence; and the
same rebel, who baffled all his operations, was unhorsed, and
almost slain by the vigor of his lance. But Andronicus soon
discovered a more easy and pleasing conquest, the beautiful
Philippa, sister of the empress Maria, and daughter of Raymond of
Poitou, the Latin prince of Antioch. For her sake he deserted his
station, and wasted the summer in balls and tournaments: to his
love she sacrificed her innocence, her reputation, and the offer
of an advantageous marriage. But the resentment of Manuel for
this domestic affront interrupted his pleasures: Andronicus left
the indiscreet princess to weep and to repent; and, with a band
of desperate adventurers, undertook the pilgrimage of Jerusalem.
His birth, his martial renown, and professions of zeal, announced
him as the champion of the Cross: he soon captivated both the
clergy and the king; and the Greek prince was invested with the
lordship of Berytus, on the coast of Phoenicia.

In his neighborhood resided a young and handsome queen, of his
own nation and family, great-granddaughter of the emperor Alexis,
and widow of Baldwin the Third, king of Jerusalem. She visited
and loved her kinsman. Theodora was the third victim of his
amorous seduction; and her shame was more public and scandalous
than that of her predecessors. The emperor still thirsted for
revenge; and his subjects and allies of the Syrian frontier were
repeatedly pressed to seize the person, and put out the eyes, of
the fugitive. In Palestine he was no longer safe; but the tender
Theodora revealed his danger, and accompanied his flight. The
queen of Jerusalem was exposed to the East, his obsequious
concubine; and two illegitimate children were the living
monuments of her weakness. Damascus was his first refuge; and, in
the characters of the great Noureddin and his servant Saladin,
the superstitious Greek might learn to revere the virtues of the
Mussulmans. As the friend of Noureddin he visited, most probably,
Bagdad, and the courts of Persia; and, after a long circuit round
the Caspian Sea and the mountains of Georgia, he finally settled
among the Turks of Asia Minor, the hereditary enemies of his
country. The sultan of Colonia afforded a hospitable retreat to
Andronicus, his mistress, and his band of outlaws: the debt of
gratitude was paid by frequent inroads in the Roman province of
Trebizond; and he seldom returned without an ample harvest of
spoil and of Christian captives. In the story of his adventures,
he was fond of comparing himself to David, who escaped, by a long
exile, the snares of the wicked. But the royal prophet (he
presumed to add) was content to lurk on the borders of Judaea, to
slay an Amalekite, and to threaten, in his miserable state, the
life of the avaricious Nabal. The excursions of the Comnenian
prince had a wider range; and he had spread over the Eastern
world the glory of his name and religion.

By a sentence of the Greek church, the licentious rover had been
separated from the faithful; but even this excommunication may
prove, that he never abjured the profession of Chistianity.

His vigilance had eluded or repelled the open and secret
persecution of the emperor; but he was at length insnared by the
captivity of his female companion. The governor of Trebizond
succeeded in his attempt to surprise the person of Theodora: the
queen of Jerusalem and her two children were sent to
Constantinople, and their loss imbittered the tedious solitude of
banishment. The fugitive implored and obtained a final pardon,
with leave to throw himself at the feet of his sovereign, who was
satisfied with the submission of this haughty spirit. Prostrate
on the ground, he deplored with tears and groans the guilt of his
past rebellion; nor would he presume to arise, unless some
faithful subject would drag him to the foot of the throne, by an
iron chain with which he had secretly encircled his neck. This
extraordinary penance excited the wonder and pity of the
assembly; his sins were forgiven by the church and state; but the
just suspicion of Manuel fixed his residence at a distance from
the court, at Oenoe, a town of Pontus, surrounded with rich
vineyards, and situate on the coast of the Euxine. The death of
Manuel, and the disorders of the minority, soon opened the
fairest field to his ambition. The emperor was a boy of twelve or
fourteen years of age, without vigor, or wisdom, or experience:
his mother, the empress Mary, abandoned her person and government
to a favorite of the Comnenian name; and his sister, another
Mary, whose husband, an Italian, was decorated with the title of
Caesar, excited a conspiracy, and at length an insurrection,
against her odious step-mother. The provinces were forgotten, the
capital was in flames, and a century of peace and order was
overthrown in the vice and weakness of a few months. A civil war
was kindled in Constantinople; the two factions fought a bloody
battle in the square of the palace, and the rebels sustained a
regular siege in the cathedral of St. Sophia. The patriarch
labored with honest zeal to heal the wounds of the republic, the
most respectable patriots called aloud for a guardian and
avenger, and every tongue repeated the praise of the talents and
even the virtues of Andronicus. In his retirement, he affected to
revolve the solemn duties of his oath: “If the safety or honor of
the Imperial family be threatened, I will reveal and oppose the
mischief to the utmost of my power.” His correspondence with the
patriarch and patricians was seasoned with apt quotations from
the Psalms of David and the epistles of St. Paul; and he
patiently waited till he was called to her deliverance by the
voice of his country. In his march from Oenoe to Constantinople,
his slender train insensibly swelled to a crowd and an army: his
professions of religion and loyalty were mistaken for the
language of his heart; and the simplicity of a foreign dress,
which showed to advantage his majestic stature, displayed a
lively image of his poverty and exile. All opposition sunk before
him; he reached the straits of the Thracian Bosphorus; the
Byzantine navy sailed from the harbor to receive and transport
the savior of the empire: the torrent was loud and irresistible,
and the insects who had basked in the sunshine of royal favor
disappeared at the blast of the storm. It was the first care of
Andronicus to occupy the palace, to salute the emperor, to
confine his mother, to punish her minister, and to restore the
public order and tranquillity. He then visited the sepulchre of
Manuel: the spectators were ordered to stand aloof, but as he
bowed in the attitude of prayer, they heard, or thought they
heard, a murmur of triumph or revenge: “I no longer fear thee, my
old enemy, who hast driven me a vagabond to every climate of the
earth. Thou art safely deposited under a seven-fold dome, from
whence thou canst never arise till the signal of the last
trumpet. It is now my turn, and speedily will I trample on thy
ashes and thy posterity.” From his subsequent tyranny we may
impute such feelings to the man and the moment; but it is not
extremely probable that he gave an articulate sound to his secret
thoughts. In the first months of his administration, his designs
were veiled by a fair semblance of hypocrisy, which could delude
only the eyes of the multitude; the coronation of Alexius was
performed with due solemnity, and his perfidious guardian,
holding in his hands the body and blood of Christ, most fervently
declared that he lived, and was ready to die, for the service of
his beloved pupil. But his numerous adherents were instructed to
maintain, that the sinking empire must perish in the hands of a
child, that the Romans could only be saved by a veteran prince,
bold in arms, skilful in policy, and taught to reign by the long
experience of fortune and mankind; and that it was the duty of
every citizen to force the reluctant modesty of Andronicus to
undertake the burden of the public care. The young emperor was
himself constrained to join his voice to the general acclamation,
and to solicit the association of a colleague, who instantly
degraded him from the supreme rank, secluded his person, and
verified the rash declaration of the patriarch, that Alexius
might be considered as dead, so soon as he was committed to the
custody of his guardian. But his death was preceded by the
imprisonment and execution of his mother. After blackening her
reputation, and inflaming against her the passions of the
multitude, the tyrant accused and tried the empress for a
treasonable correspondence with the king of Hungary. His own son,
a youth of honor and humanity, avowed his abhorrence of this
flagitious act, and three of the judges had the merit of
preferring their conscience to their safety: but the obsequious
tribunal, without requiring any reproof, or hearing any defence,
condemned the widow of Manuel; and her unfortunate son subscribed
the sentence of her death. Maria was strangled, her corpse was
buried in the sea, and her memory was wounded by the insult most
offensive to female vanity, a false and ugly representation of
her beauteous form. The fate of her son was not long deferred: he
was strangled with a bowstring; and the tyrant, insensible to
pity or remorse, after surveying the body of the innocent youth,
struck it rudely with his foot: “Thy father,” he cried, “was a
knave, thy mother a whore, and thyself a fool!”

The Roman sceptre, the reward of his crimes, was held by
Andronicus about three years and a half as the guardian or
sovereign of the empire. His government exhibited a singular
contrast of vice and virtue. When he listened to his passions, he
was the scourge; when he consulted his reason, the father, of his
people. In the exercise of private justice, he was equitable and
rigorous: a shameful and pernicious venality was abolished, and
the offices were filled with the most deserving candidates, by a
prince who had sense to choose, and severity to punish. He
prohibited the inhuman practice of pillaging the goods and
persons of shipwrecked mariners; the provinces, so long the
objects of oppression or neglect, revived in prosperity and
plenty; and millions applauded the distant blessings of his
reign, while he was cursed by the witnesses of his daily
cruelties. The ancient proverb, That bloodthirsty is the man who
returns from banishment to power, had been applied, with too much
truth, to Marius and Tiberius; and was now verified for the third
time in the life of Andronicus. His memory was stored with a
black list of the enemies and rivals, who had traduced his merit,
opposed his greatness, or insulted his misfortunes; and the only
comfort of his exile was the sacred hope and promise of revenge.
The necessary extinction of the young emperor and his mother
imposed the fatal obligation of extirpating the friends, who
hated, and might punish, the assassin; and the repetition of
murder rendered him less willing, and less able, to forgive. 1018
A horrid narrative of the victims whom he sacrificed by poison or
the sword, by the sea or the flames, would be less expressive of
his cruelty than the appellation of the halcyon days, which was
applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose: the tyrant strove
to transfer, on the laws and the judges, some portion of his
guilt; but the mask was fallen, and his subjects could no longer
mistake the true author of their calamities. The noblest of the
Greeks, more especially those who, by descent or alliance, might
dispute the Comnenian inheritance, escaped from the monster’s
den: Nice and Prusa, Sicily or Cyprus, were their places of
refuge; and as their flight was already criminal, they aggravated
their offence by an open revolt, and the Imperial title. Yet
Andronicus resisted the daggers and swords of his most formidable
enemies: Nice and Prusa were reduced and chastised: the Sicilians
were content with the sack of Thessalonica; and the distance of
Cyprus was not more propitious to the rebel than to the tyrant.
His throne was subverted by a rival without merit, and a people
without arms. Isaac Angelus, a descendant in the female line from
the great Alexius, was marked as a victim by the prudence or
superstition of the emperor. 1019 In a moment of despair, Angelus
defended his life and liberty, slew the executioner, and fled to
the church of St. Sophia. The sanctuary was insensibly filled
with a curious and mournful crowd, who, in his fate,
prognosticated their own. But their lamentations were soon turned
to curses, and their curses to threats: they dared to ask, “Why
do we fear? why do we obey? We are many, and he is one: our
patience is the only bond of our slavery.” With the dawn of day
the city burst into a general sedition, the prisons were thrown
open, the coldest and most servile were roused to the defence of
their country, and Isaac, the second of the name, was raised from
the sanctuary to the throne. Unconscious of his danger, the
tyrant was absent; withdrawn from the toils of state, in the
delicious islands of the Propontis. He had contracted an indecent
marriage with Alice, or Agnes, daughter of Lewis the Seventh, of
France, and relict of the unfortunate Alexius; and his society,
more suitable to his temper than to his age, was composed of a
young wife and a favorite concubine. On the first alarm, he
rushed to Constantinople, impatient for the blood of the guilty;
but he was astonished by the silence of the palace, the tumult of
the city, and the general desertion of mankind. Andronicus
proclaimed a free pardon to his subjects; they neither desired,
nor would grant, forgiveness; he offered to resign the crown to
his son Manuel; but the virtues of the son could not expiate his
father’s crimes. The sea was still open for his retreat; but the
news of the revolution had flown along the coast; when fear had
ceased, obedience was no more: the Imperial galley was pursued
and taken by an armed brigantine; and the tyrant was dragged to
the presence of Isaac Angelus, loaded with fetters, and a long
chain round his neck. His eloquence, and the tears of his female
companions, pleaded in vain for his life; but, instead of the
decencies of a legal execution, the new monarch abandoned the
criminal to the numerous sufferers, whom he had deprived of a
father, a husband, or a friend. His teeth and hair, an eye and a
hand, were torn from him, as a poor compensation for their loss:
and a short respite was allowed, that he might feel the
bitterness of death. Astride on a camel, without any danger of a
rescue, he was carried through the city, and the basest of the
populace rejoiced to trample on the fallen majesty of their
prince. After a thousand blows and outrages, Andronicus was hung
by the feet, between two pillars, that supported the statues of a
wolf and an a sow; and every hand that could reach the public
enemy, inflicted on his body some mark of ingenious or brutal
cruelty, till two friendly or furious Italians, plunging their
swords into his body, released him from all human punishment. In
this long and painful agony, “Lord, have mercy upon me!” and “Why
will you bruise a broken reed?” were the only words that escaped
from his mouth. Our hatred for the tyrant is lost in pity for the
man; nor can we blame his pusillanimous resignation, since a
Greek Christian was no longer master of his life.

1018 (return) [ Fallmerayer (Geschichte des Kaiserthums von
Trapezunt, p. 29, 33) has highly drawn the character of
Andronicus. In his view the extermination of the Byzantine
factions and dissolute nobility was part of a deep-laid and
splendid plan for the regeneration of the empire. It was
necessary for the wise and benevolent schemes of the father of
his people to lop off those limbs which were infected with
irremediable pestilence— “and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea,
excused his devilish deeds!!”—Still the fall of Andronicus was a
fatal blow to the Byzantine empire.—M.]

1019 (return) [ According to Nicetas, (p. 444,) Andronicus
despised the imbecile Isaac too much to fear him; he was arrested
by the officious zeal of Stephen, the instrument of the Emperor’s
cruelties.—M.]

I have been tempted to expatiate on the extraordinary character
and adventures of Andronicus; but I shall here terminate the
series of the Greek emperors since the time of Heraclius. The
branches that sprang from the Comnenian trunk had insensibly
withered; and the male line was continued only in the posterity
of Andronicus himself, who, in the public confusion, usurped the
sovereignty of Trebizond, so obscure in history, and so famous in
romance. A private citizen of Philadelphia, Constantine Angelus,
had emerged to wealth and honors, by his marriage with a daughter
of the emperor Alexius. His son Andronicus is conspicuous only by
his cowardice. His grandson Isaac punished and succeeded the
tyrant; but he was dethroned by his own vices, and the ambition
of his brother; and their discord introduced the Latins to the
conquest of Constantinople, the first great period in the fall of
the Eastern empire.

If we compute the number and duration of the reigns, it will be
found, that a period of six hundred years is filled by sixty
emperors, including in the Augustan list some female sovereigns;
and deducting some usurpers who were never acknowledged in the
capital, and some princes who did not live to possess their
inheritance. The average proportion will allow ten years for each
emperor, far below the chronological rule of Sir Isaac Newton,
who, from the experience of more recent and regular monarchies,
has defined about eighteen or twenty years as the term of an
ordinary reign. The Byzantine empire was most tranquil and
prosperous when it could acquiesce in hereditary succession; five
dynasties, the Heraclian, Isaurian, Amorian, Basilian, and
Comnenian families, enjoyed and transmitted the royal patrimony
during their respective series of five, four, three, six, and
four generations; several princes number the years of their reign
with those of their infancy; and Constantine the Seventh and his
two grandsons occupy the space of an entire century. But in the
intervals of the Byzantine dynasties, the succession is rapid and
broken, and the name of a successful candidate is speedily erased
by a more fortunate competitor. Many were the paths that led to
the summit of royalty: the fabric of rebellion was overthrown by
the stroke of conspiracy, or undermined by the silent arts of
intrigue: the favorites of the soldiers or people, of the senate
or clergy, of the women and eunuchs, were alternately clothed
with the purple: the means of their elevation were base, and
their end was often contemptible or tragic. A being of the nature
of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer
measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and
contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager,
in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and shortlived
enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and
enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition
of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have
rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to
a fleeting moment: the grave is ever beside the throne: the
success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of
his prize and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty
phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly
dwell on our remembrance. The observation that, in every age and
climate, ambition has prevailed with the same commanding energy,
may abate the surprise of a philosopher: but while he condemns
the vanity, he may search the motive, of this universal desire to
obtain and hold the sceptre of dominion. To the greater part of
the Byzantine series, we cannot reasonably ascribe the love of
fame and of mankind. The virtue alone of John Comnenus was
beneficent and pure: the most illustrious of the princes, who
procede or follow that respectable name, have trod with some
dexterity and vigor the crooked and bloody paths of a selfish
policy: in scrutinizing the imperfect characters of Leo the
Isaurian, Basil the First, and Alexius Comnenus, of Theophilus,
the second Basil, and Manuel Comnenus, our esteem and censure are
almost equally balanced; and the remainder of the Imperial crowd
could only desire and expect to be forgotten by posterity. Was
personal happiness the aim and object of their ambition? I shall
not descant on the vulgar topics of the misery of kings; but I
may surely observe, that their condition, of all others, is the
most pregnant with fear, and the least susceptible of hope. For
these opposite passions, a larger scope was allowed in the
revolutions of antiquity, than in the smooth and solid temper of
the modern world, which cannot easily repeat either the triumph
of Alexander or the fall of Darius. But the peculiar infelicity
of the Byzantine princes exposed them to domestic perils, without
affording any lively promise of foreign conquest. From the
pinnacle of greatness, Andronicus was precipitated by a death
more cruel and shameful than that of the malefactor; but the most
glorious of his predecessors had much more to dread from their
subjects than to hope from their enemies. The army was licentious
without spirit, the nation turbulent without freedom: the
Barbarians of the East and West pressed on the monarchy, and the
loss of the provinces was terminated by the final servitude of
the capital.

The entire series of Roman emperors, from the first of the
Caesars to the last of the Constantines, extends above fifteen
hundred years: and the term of dominion, unbroken by foreign
conquest, surpasses the measure of the ancient monarchies; the
Assyrians or Medes, the successors of Cyrus, or those of
Alexander.

VOLUME FIVE